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- What role does the concept of “loss aversion” play in buyer resistance? How can product managers leverage this knowledge to facilitate the adoption of new features?
- Loss Aversion means that buyers tend to overvalue losses by a factor of three, as opposed to potential gains. For PG&E customers, they were much more likely to cause uproar and demand reparations on lost value as opposed to paying into preventative measures that would prevent such loss. Buyer resistance on items also increases by multiples over time, though the buyers themselves are not aware of their loss aversion.
- Discuss the concept of “feature creep” and its potential negative impact on product development. How can product managers avoid falling into this trap while addressing eager sellers’ demands?
- Feature creep acts as overfitting a singular product or product line to customer wants until it becomes bloated and sectioned into a market of only longtime customers, as the product has become too heavy for the average new consumer. The process of feature creeping creates products that are much too heavy for shifting dynamically according to the market such that the company is able to capture growth and new consumer hotspots. Product managers need to continuously assess the growth potential of specific markets/consumer populations and keep an updated roadmap or timeline of how the product should be growing. This allows them to understand when they should introduce a companion product, or a fuller product line, or shift away so the company does not get bogged down by a singular heavy-weight product.
